About Me

Buford C. Terrell
Controlled substances laws and their consequences have been the center of my professional life for over fifteen years. I host a public interest television program in Houston, “Drugs, Crime, and Politics” , produced by the Drug Policy forum of Texas, and have done so for most of its ten-year history. Before my retirement, I taught a seminar, “Controlled Substances Law” for many years at South Texas College of Law.
In this blog I intend to explore the features and consequences of those laws, especially the unintended consequences, and look at the need for, and possibility of, changing them. Don’t expect a lot of breaking news or current events, although there will be some. My approach will be more historical and theoretical. I hope to get a lot of criticism – good, bad, and otherwise – and to start some good, heated discussions.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Roe v. Wade and Prohibition

Roe v. Wade and Prohibition

Today
marks the fortieth anniversary of Roe v.
Wade, the Supreme Court decision that held state laws prohibiting abortion
are unconstitutional.

That’s
right, Roe was a Prohibition case.Until that case was decided, a thriving black
market in abortions existed in all of the states, and it exhibited the flaws of
all other black markets, including that for drugs now nourished by drug
Prohibition laws.

Most
of today’s population is too young to remember pre-Roe America, and many of them assume that abortions first became
common after that date; but just as drugs did not disappear with the Harrison
Tax Act, abortions took place frequently in the days before and people drank
beer before Alcohol Prohibition was repealed.Scholars may argue whether the total annual number of abortions went up
or down after Roe (one of the
problems with black markets is that reliable statistics do not exist), but
prohibited abortions took place in the millions.

Just
like prohibited liquor or drugs, prohibited abortions were dangerous.The plaintiff’s lawyer in Roe still wears a lapel pin crafted to
show a coathanger covered by a cancellation sign.Women went to untrained, unlicensed
back-alley abortionists who operated unsterilely. They tried to abort themselves
by tumbling down stairs or ingesting poisons.For many, that coathanger was the instrument of choice.And many died.Or became sterile from botched
procedures.Just as Switzerland saw
overdose deaths disappear when they began distributing free, pure heroin to
addicts, America saw abortion-related deaths disappear when abortions moved
from the back alleys to the doctors’ offices.

Beyond
the back alley butchers, illegal abortions built a thriving commerce, with
transactions numbering in the millions. Women who were well-off could simply travel to
other countries (or to a very few of the states) for abortions legal at those
destinations.Ironically in light of its
later role as a supplier of illegal drugs, Mexico was the abortion destination
of those with less money.When I was a
teenager in Texas, we joked about the boys going to Juarez for the live sex
shows while the girls went to erase the results of live sex.Unscrupulous doctors managed to maintain
abortion practices in the shadows, much like some doctors today run “pill mills”,
selling opioid prescriptions to be filled by unquestioning pharmacists.One typical arrangement would be for
cooperating OB/Gyn practitioners in different towns to refer patients for
consultation and possible D&C procedures.The tissues removed by those D&Cs would almost always contain a
fetus, quietly disposed of with the other medical waste from the examining
room.

One
other parallel should be noted.All of
the Prohibitions are rooted in attempts of powerful groups to impress their
religious beliefs on the behavior of others.The alcohol “temperance” movement, laws against prostitution and
gambling, and drug Prohibition all sprang from the fundamentalist Christian
activism of the nineteenth century, and the anti-abortion movement is an aspect
of those more concerned with the immortal souls with which they believe fetuses
are imbued with than with the health and safety of humans.

As
we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the end of one Prohibition, with the
accompanying improvement of public health and safety, we must continue to work
to repeal drug Prohibition as well.